


the other side of goodbye

by oryx



Category: Kamen Rider 555
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Double Dating, F/F, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 19:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14408709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: Takumi gets wrangled into a double date of sorts, assuming either of them can successfully ask the person they'd like to take.





	the other side of goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snakelesbians](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snakelesbians/gifts).



> a "gift" for my wonderful pal 2014federalbudget on tumblr. thank you for your patience ;_;  
> takes place in an AU where the events of the faiz endgame still basically happened? but like. not as much, if that makes sense. i'll fix everything you broke one day inoue toshiki or so help me god,

  
“You’ve heard about it, right? The Lovers’ Comet?”  
   
Takumi pauses in the middle of his folding; blinks at her across the ironing board. “The what?”  
   
Mari stares back at him for a long moment before groaning and rolling her eyes. “Seriously? How are you so out of the loop all the time?” She lifts her phone and shoves it into his face. “I’m talking about this, idiot.”  
   
He takes it from her and skims through a long mail from someone named “Sacchan”: an attached, grainy photo of a starry sky, the text beneath it excitedly proclaiming that a comet that hasn’t made an orbit in 89 years will be passing by Earth a week from tomorrow.  
   
“They call it the Lovers’ Comet,” he reads aloud. “If you observe it with someone you care about, you are guaranteed to become the perfect love~love couple.” He levels her with an incredulous look. “You believe in this stuff?”  
   
“Not particularly,” she says, maybe a bit too quick. “But even if it’s all nonsense it would still be fun, right? To go see it. Get out of Tokyo for a couple hours.”  
   
“You want to go to this romantic thing… with me?”  
   
Mari makes a face. “Very funny. I’m saying you could ask someone and I could ask someone and we could all go together, y’know? And that way I’ll be there to give you moral support. Since I know you’re awful at this sort of thing.”  
   
She sounds like she’s the one who’s hoping for moral support. Takumi shakes his head and returns to his folding. “Why not ask Keitaro instead?”  
   
“That’s – ” She breaks off awkwardly, biting her lip. “It just. Wouldn’t work with him. Plus, he said he might be visiting his parents next weekend. So I’m not taking no as an answer from you.” She jabs a finger into his chest. “I’m gonna ask someone tomorrow, so. You better do it, too.”  
   
“Oi, don’t just force me into this,” Takumi protests, but Mari isn’t listening to him, already turning away as she taps out an enthusiastic reply text to this “Sacchan” person. He glowers at the back of her neck before sighing.  
   
Maybe, he thinks, as he glances back at the piles of laundry around him, listens to the muted chatter of the aunties gossiping with Keitaro at the front desk. Maybe it really wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get out of Tokyo, at least for a little while.  
   
  
   
  
   
He stands there with his knuckles hovering an inch away from the door, just about to knock. He swallows hard. Drops his hand and steps back.  
   
He’s not sure what he’s thinking, really. Getting all into this corny chainmail hoax bullshit. If Mari wants someone to go with her, he will, but there’s no real reason for him to play along with the rest of it.  
   
Wouldn’t it be a little sad, though, says an annoyingly logical voice in the back of his mind. If she was there with someone and you were just a third wheel.  
   
_And you want to ask him, don’t you?_  
   
(That voice is far harder to ignore.)  
   
He steps forward again to knock before he can have any more second thoughts about it, at the exact same moment that Mari turns around the corner and nearly collides with him. They freeze in place, wide-eyed and startled as they stare at each other.  
   
He finally gathers himself enough to hiss: “What are you doing here?”  
   
“That’s my line,” she hisses back at him. “You – I thought you were asking Saya-san!”  
   
“Wha –  _Kimura?_  Seriously?”  
   
“Yeah, seriously! You and her always get along and you only get along with like four people in the world, so. It seemed obvious!”  
   
“Well it’s not! Just – get out of here, will you? I was here first.” Privately, his heart is jackhammering in his chest. He hadn’t even considered it. Who Mari might ask. It had been a faraway thought until now, when suddenly those old memories are coming back to him. Of Mari sitting across the table from him all those months ago, saying  _he seems so nice, though, and responsible_ with a faint redness in her cheeks.  _Not like you, Takumi_  –  
   
“ _You_  get out of here,” Mari says with a scowl. She bumps into him with her shoulder hard enough to knock him slightly off balance. “We’re supposed to be helping each other out, y’know! If you’re here you’ll just – you’ll throw me off.”  
   
“The hell is that supposed to mean – ”  
   
“Um.”  
   
They turn in unison to find the apartment door open, Kiba blinking at them as he stands there with a white kitchen apron over his clothes, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His smile is bemused. “Would you two like to come in?”  
   
This is only the second time that Takumi has been inside their new apartment – cramped and somewhat dingy compared to their old place. But  _that_  apartment had been provided for them by Smart Brain, and no matter how chic it had been, there had always been an underlying vibe of wrongness about it. As if all the stylish wall art was there to conceal something more unsettling.  
   
This place, Takumi has decided, with its odd stain across part of the ceiling and sliding doors that get stuck whenever you try to open them, is much more home-y by far. Of course Keitaro had offered to let all three of them stay at the cleaner’s, but they’d declined with an air of “no, no, we couldn’t impose on you” that had felt like something deeper, Kiba claiming they had enough from his last Smart Brain paycheck to coast by on for a while.  
   
Takumi wonders if it still might happen at some point, though. The three of them moving in.  
   
Things like jobs and normal lives are notoriously hard to come by, for people who are by all accounts legally dead.  
   
“You caught us right as we were about to start cooking, sorry,” Kiba is saying, and Osada pops her head out of the kitchen, her hair tied up in a high bun.  
   
“Ah. Sonoda-san, Inui-san.” She smiles. “We’re making soup. Are you… going to want to stay for dinner?”  
   
“No, that’s okay,” Mari says hurriedly. When Takumi glances over he finds her beaming, sunny and earnest in a way that makes him do a double take. “Actually, there’s this place a couple blocks away I’ve been wanting to show you. This cute little shop. You want to go now?”  
   
“Eh?” Osada’s eyes are owlish as she tilts her head to the side. “Now? But, I was going to help – ”  
   
Mari is walking over to lift the floral-patterned apron up over her head for her. “Don’t worry about it,” she says brightly. “Takumi will take over for you.” She’s shoving the apron into his hands before he even really registers her words, giving him an expectant look. “Won’t you, Takumi?”  
   
“Haa?”  
   
“C’mon, let’s go,” Mari is saying, all smiles again, slipping her hand into Osada’s and tugging her towards the door, Osada’s surprise fades quickly into fondness as she is pulled along. ( _Ah_ , he thinks, staring after them as he opens and closes his mouth wordlessly. So all along, the person Mari wanted to ask was…)  
   
The door closes behind them and they are gone a moment later, leaving Takumi standing there holding the flowery apron and feeling Kiba’s eyes on him.  
   
“Well,” Kiba says, after a beat of awkward silence. “I  _could_  still use some help chopping vegetables, if you don’t mind.”  
   
  
   
It’s not as if things have been strained between them, since the defeat of the Orphenoch King. “Strained” seems like too raw of a word for this feeling. It’s more like a slight displacement, as if they’ve both been rattled just a little to the left of the space they used to occupy.  
   
Takumi tries to focus on the methodical movement of the knife in his hands, the  _thunk_  of it hitting the cutting board, but all the while he is consciously aware of the closeness between them in this cramped kitchen. He glances over, sidelong, to find Kiba frowning down at the recipe, a few strands of hair falling forward before he tucks them behind his ear.  
   
“Have you… heard about that meteor?” Takumi asks, stilted. “Comet, whatever.”  
   
Kiba straightens to look at him in surprise. “Are you interested in that, Inui-kun?”  
   
“I mean.” He clears his throat. “Only a little. Mari wants to go see it. I think she’s gonna invite Osada, so. You want to come, too?”  
   
An emotion he can’t place flickers across Kiba’s face before being smoothed away. “So… the four of us?” he says, and Takumi nods.  
   
Kiba hums thoughtfully as he taste-tests the broth that’s beginning to simmer on the stovetop. “Well. Since you’re offering… I guess that does sound pretty nice.” A small smile. “I took a few astronomy courses back in college, actually. I’ve always been kind of fascinated by that sort of thing. Space and all tha – oh! I should be adding the carrots right now, shouldn’t I?”  
   
Their fingers brush as he reaches over hastily to grab the cutting board, and Takumi lets his hand fall. He can already feel himself filing that tiny fact about astronomy away in the back of his mind. He’s not sure when he started doing this. Focusing on and remembering every little fragment of Kiba’s life that he learns. Not for any purpose.  
   
Just that it makes him feel somehow at ease, knowing that he prefers soba over udon and played soccer in high school but wasn’t very good at it and sometimes hums along to songs from the seventies (“it’s what my parents listened to”) when they come on the radio.  
   
He wonders why that is.  
   
  
   
  
   
He gets home to find Mari slumped facedown across the table.  
   
“You,” he says, and freezes, pausing in the doorway. “Are you dead?”  
   
“Might as well be,” Mari mutters, voice muffled against the laminate. “I said ‘as a friend.’”  
   
“…What?”  
   
“I said ‘as a friend!’” she repeats, propping herself up on her elbows to reveal an utterly distraught expression. “I invited her and then I got nervous and added ‘as a friend!’ Like a stupid idiot!”  
   
Takumi can feel his brow furrow. “So. You really… seriously like her, then? Osada?”  
   
Mari averts her eyes; fidgets a bit in her seat. “Obviously,” she says, going for a kind of easy confidence that she doesn’t manage to pull off.  
   
“But I thought you liked – ” He falters mid-sentence, then, shaking his head and stopping himself right there. He’s getting the feeling that they both misunderstood each other’s intentions today. And this does put some things into perspective: namely, the way she’s been randomly springing questions like “if two girls date, do they  _both_  give each other something for Valentine's Day” on him and Keitaro as of late.  
   
“She agreed to come, right?” Takumi says with a shrug. He flops down on the couch and lets his head fall back against the wooden frame. “So just explain it later. What you really meant. She’s not someone you have to be all anxious about. She did date Keitaro for a while.”  
   
When she doesn’t reply for a solid minute he twists around to find her glaring at him suspiciously. “Hate it when  _you_  give sensible advice,” she mutters. “Makes me feel even worse.”  
   
He scowls and tosses a throw pillow at her with as much force as he can muster.  
  
  
   
  
   
It’s two days later when Kiba steps through the door, sets a bag of laundry on the counter and asks:  
   
“The invitation to see the comet. Did you mean that… as a date?”  
   
Takumi stares up at him, pulse jumping, his pen gone very still against the paper where he’s been aimlessly doodling. Kiba looks troubled, the corner of his mouth curving downwards.  
   
“…Something like that,” Takumi says slowly, and Kiba’s expression changes in an instant: seeming to close off like a door being slammed, a resigned sort of regret written across his face.  
   
“Then,” he says, “I’m going to have to decline, actually. I’m sorry. It was – nice of you to offer. …The usual for these, by the way, please,” he adds, indicating towards the bag of laundry, then inclines his head and turns away to leave as quick as he came, the line of his shoulders tight with tension as he passes on to the next storefront and disappears out of sight.  
   
Takumi blinks at the empty doorway.  
   
“Was that Kiba-san?” Keitaro calls from the back room, but his voice sounds like it’s coming from at least a mile away.  
   
“I’m going out for a sec,” he calls in return, his chair hitting the wall behind him as he jumps to his feet.  
   
Kiba has already made it to the pedestrian bridge over the river when Takumi catches up with him.  
   
“Oi,” he says, and Kiba halts mid-step. His hand curls and uncurls at his side. When he finally turns back to glance at him he looks indescribably tired.  
   
“I’m not just gonna… accept that and not ask any questions,” Takumi says, putting as much stubbornness as he can into his voice to disguise the faint waver. He takes a step closer. “We’ve done enough of that already, haven’t we?”  
   
Kiba smiles just a little at that, tight and humorless. “I guess you’re right.” His shoulders seem to droop, then, and he leans against the railing of the bridge, staring down into the sad trickle of water that’s comprising the river during this recent stretch of drought. “I really am – I’m sorry, Inui-kun. I’m not being fair, am I?”  
   
Takumi joins him at the railing. “What’s this about?” he asks, keeping his tone as casual as he can manage.  
   
For a time, Kiba is silent.  
   
And then: “You deserve better.”  
   
Takumi frowns.  
   
“I don’t want to see you waste your time on me. You – ” He breaks off, the line of his jaw tight. “I did something terrible. To someone I used to care about. And then… I turned against you, too. I could’ve done the same thing all over again. I might be cursed, I think.” He laughs hollowly. “People near me always get hurt. I thought I was protecting them, but. Even Osada and Kaidou would’ve been safer without me. Honestly, I… keep thinking I should leave soon. That it would be better for everyone. Before I make some awful mistake again.”  
   
Takumi listens to this with an ache in his throat, knuckles white where he’s gripping the railing.  
   
“You don’t – ” he says hoarsely. “You don’t have to think like that. Everything’s done now. The fighting… we can forget about it. And I don’t blame you for what you did.”  
   
When Kiba looks over at him his gaze is heavy. “You should.”  
   
“Well I don’t want to,” Takumi snaps, anger suddenly hot beneath his skin. “I’m done with that, too. Blaming people who aren’t really responsible. So just…” Here he trails off, words caught somewhere behind his teeth. Instead he reaches out haltingly to put a hand on Kiba’s shoulder, tugging him forward and catching him in an awkward one-armed hug. Kiba takes a sharp breath, tensing up.  
  
“Stay here,” Takumi mutters. “Please.”  
   
He can feel Kiba’s heartbeat against his own chest.  
   
Little by little, he can feel Kiba relax, his hand drifting up to rest on the small of Takumi’s back, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.  
   
“You’re really,” he starts, voice thick, but doesn’t seem to know how to end that thought. When he shakes his head, his hair brushes soft against Takumi’s neck. “I guess I have to come along, actually. To see that comet. Since I’m the only one with a car license between the four of us.”  
   
Takumi pauses. His eyes widen.  
   
“Ah,” he says, and despite it all he can feel Kiba laugh against his shoulder.  
   
  
   
  
   
“She’s wearing the hair clip,” Mari mutters to him. They’re shoving the last few drinks and snacks into the needlessly huge picnic basket they’ve decided for some reason to lug along with them.  
   
“Huh?”  
   
“ _The hair clip_ ,” she repeats, indicating behind her. He turns and cranes his neck to where Osada and Kiba are sitting on the couch, laughing as they commiserate about how they both barely managed to avoid bringing Kaidou along as a fifth wheel. Sure enough, there is a small decoration in Osada’s hair, standing out in sharp contrast against the black: a clip shaped like a little white bird.  
   
“I bought it for her,” Mari says proudly. “When I asked her to come.”  
   
“Good one,” Takumi murmurs. “Almost makes up for panicking and turning it into a friend thing at the last second.”  
   
She purses her lips, eyes narrowing, and nearly shuts his hands in the picnic basket as she closes it.  
   
Keitaro has left them the van, and Takumi has to spend a few minutes explaining everything that’s wrong with it – “you have to slam the driver’s seat door but like a gentle slam?” – before he tosses Kiba the keys.  
   
“I haven’t taken a road trip in a while,” he says, eyes brightening as he smiles, and Takumi feels something flip in the pit of his stomach.  
   
The sun is setting behind them as they pull out of the suburbs and on to the main roads. The girls are in the back, pressed up close to one another, Mari flipping through a photo album from this year’s far more subdued Ryuusei reunion. She’s pointing people out and telling stories from when they were kids to Osada, who looks shockingly happy to be regaled with these anecdotes.  
   
Although maybe it’s not so shocking after all, he thinks, reaching out to turn on the radio and fiddle with the dial until he hits the oldies station. When a Yamaguchi Momoe song comes on and Kiba begins humming along (seemingly without even noticing that he is), Takumi focuses on the view out the window and hides a smile behind his hand.  
   
It’s an hour and a half out into the countryside, to the hill that the news had recommended for comet viewing, and plenty of other people seem to have taken that advice as well. Unlike those people, the cleaners’ van wasn’t meant for poorly-paved back roads, and they end up just turning off along the side and trekking the last half mile to the hill, using their phones to light their way.  
   
“At least  _they’re_  having fun,” Takumi grumbles, switching the obnoxiously heavy picnic basket to his other hand, watching Mari and Osada walking ahead of them arm in arm.  
   
“I don’t think it’d be an outing for us if something didn’t go wrong,” Kiba says with a quiet laugh. He’s weighed down by the backpack stuffed with other odds and ends that they ‘might need, you just never know,’ as Keitaro had said as he’d put it all together.  
   
“Go wrong, huh,” Takumi echoes. He supposes he really shouldn’t be complaining about anything right now. Not when their last attempt at something like this had nearly ended in Osada’s untimely death.  
   
Not when Kusaka had been there, too, he realizes with a start.  
   
(The basket suddenly feels far lighter in his hands.)  
   
The hill is already dotted with people, and they end up in a slightly less ideal spot near the bottom of the slope, laying out the old quilt they’ve dragged along with them and sinking down with sighs of relief all around. Takumi leans back on his hands and stares up at the sky. He forgets sometimes, when he hasn’t left Tokyo in a while, just how much more interesting the sky looks out here in the boonies: the stars brighter and greater in number, able to make out the difference in colour between the whites and blues and reds.  
   
“We’ve got like an hour left til this thing’s supposed to show up,” Mari says. She flips her phone open to illuminate her grin and what looks like a deck of cards in her hands. “So. Who wants to play poker in the dark?”  
   
Despite protesting “oh, but I’ve never played before,” Osada seems to catch on to the game startlingly fast. Takumi glances over at one point to find her deliberating over her hand like a businessperson reading legal contracts, a calm, calculated demeanor about her as she pushes her lipgloss into the pot and says “I’ll raise.”  
   
In the end, she wins everything: Kiba’s loose change and Mari’s hair tie and the coupon Takumi had found in his back pocket for 20% off at the batting cages.  
   
“Osada, have you… really never played before?” he can hear Kiba asking, but doesn’t catch her reply, distracted suddenly by the people who’ve just taken up a spot far too close to them, their voices overloud as they laugh. He glances around. He hadn’t even noticed during the game, but they’ve been almost surrounded in the time since they got here, everyone’s conversations melding into a rather disorienting hum. In the darkness, most of them are little more than faceless silhouettes.  
   
Takumi squares his shoulders and sets his teeth, discomfort prickling at the back of his neck. This part, he wonders if he’ll ever get past. The instant fight-or-flight response whenever there are too many people near him.  
   
“I’m,” he says, and swallows hard. “I’m gonna. Take a walk real quick.”  
   
In the light from her phone’s flashlight, the look Mari gives him is quietly understanding. “Don’t get lost out there,” she says, and he nods as he gets to his feet.  
   
He picks his way through the sea of blankets and lawn chairs, his anxious tension ebbing back a bit as the people get fewer and far between, until finally the loudest sounds are his own footfalls against the grass. At the foot of the slope on the other side of the hill there is a pond – small and still like a black mirror set in the earth. There’s a rickety dock extending out over it, and he wonders if someone used to live around here, not so long ago.  
   
He reaches down for a handful of pebbles from along the waterline, turning them over between his fingers, skipping one across the pond’s surface and watching the water ripple outward.  
   
“Inui-kun.”  
   
He jumps a bit; turns to find Kiba behind him looking apologetic in the glow of his phone.  
   
“Sorry. Sonoda said it would be alright for me to follow you, but I can – ”  
   
“No,” Takumi says, a bit too quick. “That’s not… ‘S fine.”  
   
He’s cursing himself internally now. This was supposed to be a date, wasn’t it? And here he is just walking away.  
   
Kiba steps forward to stand next to him, holding his hand out, and Takumi passes him a pebble without having to be told. Kiba’s stone skips four times across the water before sinking.  
   
“Thank you,” Kiba says, after a long, thoughtful moment. “For inviting me out to this. It’s been… nice, so far. Can’t believe I really almost turned you down.”  
   
Takumi looks at him, sidelong and questioning.  
   
“So you’re… not thinking about leaving anymore?”  
   
Kiba smiles faintly. “I don’t know. Don’t you still think about it, some days?”  
   
That, Takumi can’t deny. He has so much now, things he never thought he would have, and yet. It still hits him, on occasion. The urge to pack his things and run without saying goodbye. Old habits and all that.  
   
“We’ll stop each other, then,” he says, skipping the last stone in his hand with enough force that it lands in the long grass on the opposite bank. “From now on, anytime it happens.”  
   
He can feel Kiba staring at him.  
   
“That sounds good,” he says quietly. He reaches out to touch his wrist, and Takumi’s pulse thuds in his ears as he turns, as Kiba’s other hand drifts up to rest warm against his jawline. In the dark, he can see the vague outline of his smile before he leans in to kiss him.  
   
It’s soft and lingering, and Takumi’s chest feels tight as he reaches out, too, curling his fingers in the collar of Kiba’s shirt –  
   
There is a chorus of “ooh”s and gasps from the other side of the hill. They break apart and tilt their heads back to stare up at the sky in unison, where a ball of reddish light is arcing past overhead, leaving a faint glow in its wake. The whole thing takes maybe twenty seconds to watch before it is gone, and they are left standing there, blinking up at the same old stars.  
   
Takumi frowns. “What, is that it?”  
   
Kiba huffs out a wry laugh. “I always heard it was a bit disappointing. Comet-watching.”  
   
Takumi certainly feels like he  _should_  be disappointed in this moment, but for some reason that particular emotion is evading him.  
   
“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower, too, isn’t there? We could stick around for that, at least,” Kiba muses, and when he tugs on Takumi’s wrist he lets himself be led, back towards the sea of people on the other side of the hill.


End file.
